Featherweight
by Elliott Silver
Summary: "I'll need some help with the plate armor," she said.


Title: Feather-weight

Author: Elliott Silver

"I'll need some help with the plate armor," she said.

"Yes," he answered her, though her voice was brusque and distant and fragile all at once. They were both tired, having ridden miles since the morning's battle on the beach. Marion had been nearly silent the entire journey, almost since he had carried her from the water's edge, ignoring even his king as he did so. She had been silent even passing through the villages where men and women had rushed out to greet them, to cheer them. Nottingham was in open celebration by the time they'd arrived, as dusk fell in deep shadows around them, but they travelled on, urging their weary horses up the rutted path to Pepperharrow. The village was deserted, as most had followed Tuck to town to hear the news, and the manorhouse was dark.

He wasn't sorry for the silence. He'd never liked reliving battle, to recount death, but had always preferred to live forward. Good luck could never be repaid with bad grace, he'd always said, and because he was alive simply meant someone else was not.

They dismounted stiffly, mail and metal rattling like shivers, as their horses drank gratefully at the trough. Marion had nodded her curt thanks as he led them into the stables, and he watched her walk away into the night towards the cold, empty rooms. After he'd stabled the horses, he hobbled himself to the manor, finding her in the candlelit room where she had warmed water and filled the wooden tub, laid out dry clothes, soap, and cloths. The room smelled of rosemary and sweet basil as he'd come in, clean and sharp as she turned to him without greeting and asked his help.

"There's a buckle at the back," she began, turning her back to him and coiling up the dark lengths of her hair.

"I know," he whispered, standing against her. She smelled like salt water and wet leather, like sand and sweat, like battle. He pulled the gorget from her throat and undid the pauldrons from her shoulders, the well-worn and not so costly armor that could only have been Robert's set from childhood, from a time when war was only a game, a time he could barely remember in his own life.

"Why did you come?"

"Because this is our land," she answered, raising her arms so he could pull the couters from her elbows and the much-dented vambraces from her arms. "What people would we be if we did not defend it, if we did not fight for what is ours?"

She breathed, and it was a sad, scornful sound. "Men go to war to claim land, women to defend it." Her voice was laced with bitterness, raw and justified, weary and outraged over the broken promises of Richard's Crusades, the needless Saracen wars that had taken Robert and so many others, and worse, these new hostilities, John's internecine war that had claimed Walter, imperiled her land, left her penniless and unprotected and alone.

She turned to face him and he winced at the long scrape along her angled cheek, the dark bruise pooling like smashed mulberries beneath her right eye, where Godfrey had pummeled her in the surf.

"Not all men."

He touched the swelling skin by the corner of her eye, the callused pads of his fingers skimming the lines of her face. He couldn't remember such fear, such unrelieved terror, as then, when he'd held her limp body in his arms, his blood dripping over her pale face, until she had moved, breathed, kissed him in return.

"Then what do we fight for, Robin Longstride?"

"We fight for freedom," he said, but it sounded hollow even to his ears, to anyone who'd lost someone to any nameless war made by one king against another.

"Is that not what you want?" she asked, after his silence, as he bent and released the greaves from her legs.

"I want a home, family – "

He pulled the second metal cuff from around her shin and stood slowly to stand before her.

" – a wife."

Her eyes widened, their depths dark as the sea that surrounded their island, as the bluebells that bloomed in Sherwood forest at spring, and he reached for her, loosening the straps of the tempered steel breastplate from her shoulders, pulling the metal plates from her body and setting them on the table. She stood before him in only a thin tunic and braies, the cloth stuck to her body, curled over its outlines in sweat and blood.

He was surprised that a man who had given his whole life to the service and craft of war, who owed his very existence to them, could be so ungrateful for those experiences. He finally realized what he was fighting for and it wasn't land, wasn't even freedom exactly, but this woman, her life, her love.

She went to him then, reaching for the clasp of his chain mail and pulling the heavy links from around his throat, her motions repeated from the first night he'd seen her. Had he loved her already then? Perhaps, but he knew so now, knew he wanted only to be with this women who rode beside him, fought by him, danced with him, whose words were curt and bitter, fragile and hopeful, whose touch was the very gift of heaven. He knew this as he had known few things in life.

Her fingers brushed his neck, the place where his blood beat fast and furious. There was no rush, no fuss, as she cared for him. She stripped the heraldic tunic over his head, then the weight of mail, letting it fall to the floor where it clattered and echoed in the emptiness. Her eyes were steady as the tides as she reached for the linen shirt, torn and soiled with blood and dirt, and also pulled it from him, so that he stood bare before her, his chest marked with welts, with wounds old and new, his shoulder laced with a long slash, flaking with dried blood.

Then she reached lower, for the ties on his braies.

He stopped her then, took her hands and held them hard, too hard, in his own. His fingernails bit into the soft tendons of her wrist.

"I came for you," she said, her eyes unwavering.

There was something beautiful and terrible about being alive, a mad rush of joy and desire despite or because of the precarious fragility of life, what Will called battle fever, wild and unpredictable, as real and true as breath.

"I fight for you," he answered.

She met his mouth with her own, and he reveled in the way she was warm and alive, the way she no longer tasted like salt water, like blood, like the very last edge of life.

At last she stepped away, unlacing the ties of the dark shirt from her throat and in a single beautiful motion, pulled it over her head, so that she too was bare before him.

The fabric fell from her fingers to the floor, and she stood before him unashamed, unafraid.

When he touched her, he knew there would be no stopping it, no stopping this fire between them, forged in the heat of battle met together, joined in victory. Despite tiredness, despite war, despite wounds, he wanted her, he wanted this together now more than when he'd first arrived, first seen her, first felt his heart stumble in his chest when he looked upon her. They came together, pure and inevitable, drawing apart only to breathe, the sounds of their joining resonating against the stone walls as their bodies met and merged. He finished in a blinding burst, gasping at the extent of it, shocked at the infinite hold of her love, the way that together, injured and bloody, they became whole.

Afterward, they rested against each other, settling back in the world as it was. They washed each other without speaking, savoring the touch of each other's hands on their battle-sore bodies. His hands combed through her hair, unraveling her many knots, pressing the soft lye soap against her skin and then gently patting the water from her body with a soft cloth before he too stepped into the cooling water, letting it lap at his skin. He closed his eyes as she rubbed the dirt from his hair gently, tending to the seeping gash above his forehead and the wound on his shoulder. After he dried, she dressed his wounds with mint salve, binding the cleaned lash on his arm with soft strips of fabric.

Then she took his hand and led him through the ink-spilled darkness to her chambers. Fragments of moonlight reflected against her form, as if the light was attracted to her, drawn to her. Only the dogs stirred as she pulled him to the bed and he laid beside her, letting her surety comfort him as weariness took him, let the peace of her love heal them both, the last thought before sleep the graceful feather-weight of her hand, resting on the beat of his heart, confirming it.


End file.
